Asteroid with the potential to release 1 million tons of TNT will zoom past Earth next week

Eight days from now a 100-foot-diameter asteroid named “2013 TX68” will fly past Earth for the second time in recorded history. One hundred feet is about the size of a blue whale, but to be clear, 2013 TX68 is not considered a potentially hazardous asteroid and poses no catastrophic threat to human life on Earth. Still, NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) has had its eye on this space rock since it was discovered in 2013.

The NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey first spotted 2013 TX68 on Oct. 6, 2013 while it was passing at a distance of 1.3 million miles away. Now, according to the latest updates on the asteroid’s location and orbit, the CNEOS has estimated that “2013 TX68” will fly past Earth on March 8 at a safe distance of 3 million miles away. That’s a distance of about 12.5 times farther away than the Moon is from Earth. Unfortunately for asteroid spotters, this means that we likely won’t have a chance to see the asteroid upon its closest approach. READ MORE